


Confidence Interval

by Pookaseraph



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Babies!, Established Relationship, F/M, Feels, Female Hermann Gottlieb, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hermann has MS, Married Couple, Medical, Pre-Canon, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hermione Gottlieb found herself chatted up in a bar in Seoul as the world planned to strike back against the Kaiju, she had no idea how much her world would change, and how much she would grow to rely on Newton Geiszler. She always thought they would have After, After the Kaiju, After the world was saved... but the universe always has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confidence Interval

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to Jamnesias for her beta work and prodding me with sticks repeatedly to get things done, and suffering through me not remembering her AO3 name.

.1.

Hermione Gottlieb tried to decide if it was in good taste or ill that there were so many scientists concentrated in one city, discussing the end of the world, all of them somewhere between merry and hammered on the available alcohol. Seoul was the city where the end of the world was finally being taken seriously, and Hermione was trying to decide if she wanted to get drunk. She sat at the bar of her hotel, nursing a beer, glancing over her notes from the day. A man, not that old, probably her age at 25 or so, slid onto the stool two from hers and ordered a beer before giving her a smile.

There didn't seem to be much intent behind it, just a friendly sort of thing, but the man was attractive enough: messy black-brown hair, green eyes, wayfarer glasses. She gave him a half smile in return. She didn't have any delusions about earning a chat-up, her face was too sharp and she didn't put the sort of effort into her hair and makeup that would earn her the attention her older sister, Karla, got.

"Buy you a drink?" He asked, surprising her.

"Ahh... no, thank you."

The man gave a nod and seemed to take that for the dismissal that it sort of was, held his drink aloft to her, and then spun to look out over the floor of the bar. He nursed a sip, and then his mouth made a complicated half frown as he abandoned his drink to his side.

"Dr. Hermione Gottlieb," she said, finally, after realizing he didn't actually have any intention to impose himself on her with the refusal of the offered drink.

"I know." It should have been annoying, too suave, but the man completely ruined the impression by turning around so he could look at her, face bright and excited and eager. "I was at your talk. Inspired. Newt Geiszler."

Her brow crinkled for a moment as she tried to place the name. "Didn't you consult with the United States CDC in isolating some of the compounds in Kaiju Blue that adversely impacted the human renal and pulmonary systems?"

"Oh... yeah." Dr. Geiszler shrugged. "It wasn't really used until Cabo." He seemed... Hermione tried to gauge it, not embarrassed or dismissive, just... not nearly so egotistical about it as she would have expected. "We've been working on the question of kaiju biology since the day Trespasser went down."

It was almost unseemly, Geiszler's level of interest, but Hermione couldn't help but admit that might be necessary moving forward. "Do you really think they are silicone based?"

"We haven't been able to get a look at an intact carcass," Geiszler answered, immediately. "But the chemical composition does seem to indicate that. The biochemical structures and the way their internal systems seem to be constructed point to an entire new way of thinking about biology and astrobiology."

Geiszler's passion was somewhat infectious, and Hermione could admit to herself that she had more than a few questions that Geiszler might be able to answer, questions that might help her isolate ways of tracking the kaiju, or finding their point of origin.

They ended up on one of the less occupied balconies, back and forth, biology, math, probabilities, core temperatures, oceanography... and Hermione had a thousand ideas she wanted to try... most of them related to math.

Some of them were about Dr. Geiszler and her legs around his hips.

He was looking down at his beer, maybe his third, Hermione glanced down at her own, and then out across the city.

"I should turn in," Newt said. "Have to share at least some of these findings tomorrow, right?" He paused, and after a moment of looking into her eyes, he continued: "Care to join me?"

The two of them ended up alone in the elevator, Newt's mouth on hers, his hand teasing against her waist, her arms around his neck. They barely stopped when they reached Newt's floor, and that was only to assure themselves they were alone, which they were, and the two of them fumbled down the hallway and Hermione didn't even stop herself from running her hands down his front as she pressed tight against his back. The distraction made his struggle with the door last longer than it should, but far more worth it when they ended up hard against the inside of the door.

They barely made it to the bed, and that was only because Newt didn't have condoms in his pockets and it seemed a shame to not make herself more comfortable as he tore through his bags. Part of her could appreciate that he hadn't moved them to the bedside, that maybe this wasn't just his standard conference behavior.

He went down on her first, sloppy and eager, long enough to bring her off once before kissing his way up her stomach and breasts through the afterglow. Newt paid every inch great attention, and Hermione tangled her fingers through his hair while she realized she could have gotten used to this: science and sex, in equal measure...

When she dragged him back up to her mouth, the faintest hint of her sex was still on his tongue.

Newt made sure she came again - nails digging hard into his back - before he did, and the two of them stayed tangled for several minutes, his fingers in her hair, his lips against her temple or her shoulder.

"God, you're brilliant."

She snorted into his chest, pressing a kiss to his sternum. "Brains are a turn on, Dr. Geiszler?"

"Yes. Not sure if you calling me 'Dr. Geiszler' is a turn on or not," he answered.

"Newt."

"Better. Herms?"

"Not if you value your manhood."

"'Mione?"

There was something warm in the mashed together syllables, rather than the carefully enunciated four that usually composed her name, but she wasn't sure she wanted warmth - or anything more than a casual night - when it came to her feelings about Newt Geiszler, so she left it be.

Don't get your hopes up. Newt hadn't even bought her dinner. She could already hear her sister Karla, in the morning, after the inevitable 'where were _you_?!', and Karla would say something silly, like 'that was remarkably slutty of you', with obvious pride in her voice.

"Stay the night?" He asked, fingers still tangled in her hair, lips still by her ear.

She managed to answer with a rumbling purr he must have taken for assent, because that won her a kiss on the shoulder and Newt sliding out of bed to take a few minutes in the bathroom. She had a few moments to appreciate the view as he departed.

Newt was fairly attractive, shorter than her - more so if she was wearing more impressive heels - and with a certain amount of charisma that Hermione herself had fallen prey to. He was trim, but not lean... geekish. Hermione imagined he cultivated his look fairly intentionally - fun, trendy, hip - and it made him look young and boyish.

They traded off, soon after, Hermione took a moment in the bathroom, and then made certain to spread her clothes on the spare bed in Newt's room so they wouldn't look too rumpled in the morning.

"What's your lecture tomorrow?" She asked, finally slipping back into bed and having Newt's arms slide around her instantly.

"You've already heard most of the good stuff," Newt answered. "A few theories on internal processes, potential vectors for pathogens that might attack their cell structures. The truth is a dead, decomposing kaiju out at sea would be disastrous for the local ecology..." He shook his head.

Hermione realized what he was doing a moment later, shaking it off, not talking about it, pushing it away until tomorrow.

The two of them fell asleep, Hermione's head on Newt's shoulder and a hand on his chest, his hand holding her tight to his side. The air conditioning just barely made it tolerable to be tangled up so close to another body, and Hermione was surprised how restful she found it.

*

Newt would have thought that Hermione would have been an early riser, but he found himself waking before her the next day, and getting the opportunity to observe Hermione Gottlieb at rest. Her face was more relaxed, her lips actually curved upward in sleep, her shoulder-length brown hair was a sloppy halo around her face, sticking up worse than Newt's did after he gelled it.

He doubted she would have been anyone's idea of a classic beauty, but Newt had been infatuated for months after reading one of her scathing authorial responses to criticism of her work, and perhaps something more than infatuated since her lecture and their conversation yesterday.

Perhaps the feeling was mutual, perhaps he was being an idiot.

Hermione stirred next to him, just a small thing, a crinkle of her face, that mask falling down, and her eyes fluttered open, soft brown and beautiful. He greeted her with a peck on her forehead before pulling away. "Morning."

She made that same cute, grumbling purr she'd done last night when she'd agreed to spend the night. "Or something." She rolled into the pillow and buried her face there for a moment, took a long breath, and then turned to look up at the ceiling. "Last night was..."

Newt couldn't help but tense as a few options flitted through his mind.

"Fantastic."

Fantastic was good. He let out a breath. "Repeat performances on request."

She laughed. "I might take you up on that... not now, I need to get back to my room, shower."

"I need to go over my notes," Newt admitted. "Got distracted by a gorgeous and intelligent woman last night."

Hermione turned pink, a full-faced blush that was far too endearing. "I'll let you--"

"Come to breakfast with me?"

The end of Hermione's words died on her lips, and she paused, almost confused for a moment, before she nodded. "In an hour."

About forty-five minutes later, Newt was down in the little - ridiculously overpriced - restaurant in the lobby of the hotel, sipping on an espresso and taking one last look over his slides. His advisor, Vivian, always used to give him pep talks back when he was just a dweeby little sixteen year old doing his first Bio101 TAing his sophomore year: enthusiastic, but not too buzzed, a little restrained, not flying off onto tangents... maybe that was good advice to handle Hermione as well.

He sort of sucked at dating.

Hermione joined him about ten minutes later, dressed up in a neat pair of pants and a blouse. Newt already missed last night's skirt. They stumbled, just a bit, to start, finding their common grounds again, beyond some science and a shared night together, and although they started with the weather - _the weather_ \- it soon moved on to bits of Seoul Newt wanted to see before he was forced back to Boston, while Hermione discussed the same, only Berlin.

There was a reason that scientific conferences were sometimes considered a quick hookup for the younger - and many older - professional, quick, mutual interest, with very little chance of awkward re-acquainting without trying very hard.

"And then tomorrow, it will be decided which projects we'll throw billions at." Newt hoped the UN would see fit to spend a few funds towards his and Vivian's projects, but... well they really couldn't afford to stick to only one tactic. "You picked my brain last night, what project do you want to bring to the table?"

"My sister is at Carnegie Mellon, they are... pursuing a few robotic options. They've asked me to contribute on the code front." Hermione smiled - she was gorgeous when she did, but even last night the gesture had been far too rare. "I suppose it will be a family effort. My mother is a neurologist... and has worked with Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld before"

Newt knew he was big in robotics, but there were more than a few names in the field at CMU. "A family affair, then. Ah... any chance of a relocation to Pittsburgh?"

"Maybe. If there's funding."

"Bane of academia, even when we're trying to save the world."

"Why the curiosity, Newton?" His name was... interesting, on her lips, he liked it.

A question of how far he could push, how much would be inappropriate, ran through his mind, but he took a deep breath and decided it didn't so much matter if she never wanted to see him again, but if she did, he'd best make his intentions known. "It's much closer to Boston."

Hermione's answering smile was immediate. "You'll have to visit me, then."

The 'Jaeger' Program did receive funding, and Hermione did relocate to Pittsburgh, which was not _close_ to Boston, but far closer than Germany, and it put them on much the same schedule, complete with Skype dates, and Newt getting to see his stupid, idiotic smile reflected back from his webcam as he looked over to where he could see Hermione smiling back in return.

They both worked hard, too hard, and although Newt uncovered thousands of pieces of kaiju workings that would keep Blue and the decomposition of kaiju carcasses from destroying dozens of square miles of territory, he uncovered nothing that would serve as a biological agent to stopping a live kaiju.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked, one late evening, a month after Seoul, when he answered her call with his glasses off and the bridge of his nose pinched.

"Another wall," he answered, sliding his glasses back on. "It's good stuff, important stuff, but it's not going to win us the war."

"Come visit."

He paid through the nose for it, but he was on the first plane out of Logan Airport the next morning and just north of town at an old factory that the UN had requisitioned on the cheap. A contractor badge got him in - even though it really shouldn't have - and he started to take his own tour of the facility, slowly, taking in the huge arm that was being scraped together even as he knew that there were plans in the works for more. Funding was too tight for more than that.

"Can I help you?"

Newt turned, saw a woman, thirty at the oldest, with dark brown-red hair that framed her face and her shoulders neatly. She had on a white lab coat and a clipboard and was every inch a stereotype... "I'm looking for Dr. Gottlieb."

"You found her," Dr. Gottlieb... how many of them where there?!

"Sorry, ah... Hermione, Hermione Gottlieb," Newt corrected. "Namespace collision. You must be Karla."

Karla gasped, and her eyes went wide. "Are you that boy she keeps Skyping with and she never lets me get a good look at?"

"Maybe?" He certainly hoped that Hermione wasn't Skyping with two men, but really you never...

"Newton!"

He spun, only to find himself with an armful of Hermione and a noseful of her hair and then he dragged her in tight, getting neatly re-acquainted with her lips in the process. Newt had missed her, and it was more than nice to actually be there and--

"Breakfast?"

"Yes?" He answered, confused, only to be dragged off by the elbow. "It's nice to meet you," he said, waving back at Karla as he was dragged away.

Newt's trip became their first dinner with the family; their first real date; their first scrambled, furtive lovemaking against a wall of a laboratory; and the first time, as he and Hermione curled up on her tiny little bed in the house she shared with her sister and mother, that Newt pressed a kiss to her shoulder and said: 'pretty sure I love you'.

Hermione had just looked up at him, eyebrow arched.

"Seventy five percent, at least."

"I suppose my own confidence interval is similar," she answered, and they went back to kissing after that.

The Jaeger Program had their first success less than a month later, and were moved to Kodiak Island out in Alaska, putting several hours between them, and Hermione was working night and day. Communication dropped to emails, if that, and part of Newt wondered if he should move on and if love - or something like it - was enough to keep the fires burning for months at a stretch.

And then Karloff hit Vancouver, April 2015.

Newt was there supervising the cleanup almost as soon as the kaiju fell. It was the first time they'd been able to preserve any samples from a kaiju, skin, lung tissue, organs that didn't even have names, bones, claws, the head crest. Hermione was down from Alaska only a few hours later.

"Newton?" Her voice clicked over onto the private line in his hazmat suit.

"Mmm?"

"They're forming a new organization: The Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. I'm going to enlist."

"I owe MIT another year," Newt answered, wishing that wasn't the answer. "Think they'll need a biologist next summer?"

"It's the only reason Marshal Pentecost has signed off on those disgusting chunks of monster to be shipped across country," Hermione answered, a smile in her voice. "The clean up is... proceeding much better than with previous attacks."

Hermione stayed the whole week it took Newt to secure his numerous specimens and get them safely stowed.

Newt enlisted two days before the Lima Shatterdome was opened, and after his month of training at Kodiak, he found himself assigned to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, to the still-nascent K-Science Division, under Hermione.

He'd never felt more alive in his life.

.2.

For some reason, as K-Science grew, people didn't seem to realize that the pair of them were dating. As the next year or so progressed, Hermione found herself the de facto head of what she and Newton loosely called the ‘hard science side’ (physics, math, computer science, and engineering), while Newt found himself the de facto head of what they loosely called the ‘soft science side’ (biology and chemistry, mostly). They had their own lab spaces, and the two of them rarely worked together directly, except during bi-weekly sitreps to figure out where crossover and collaboration would be needed.

Newt was disgustingly desirable. Hermione usually kept herself from the most fervent of attentions by dressing like a schoolmarm, but even she received the occasional invitation for drinks out.

"I hate new recruit Monday," Hermione said, collapsing into bed and starting to tug off her shoes.

Newt made one of his usual inquisitive noises as he tugged his tie loose and pulled it over his head. Hermione wasn't even sure he knew how to tie the thing, he just had two or three that his mother had tied, and one that Hermione had, and he left them hanging up like little skinny-tie nooses.

Hermione pitched her voice high, and then continued: "'What's the deal with Dr. _Geiszler_?' 'I didn't see a ring'." And then, in a deeper voice, she continued: "'Think he could be gay?'"

The answering laugh was worth it, and Newt took a few steps over to brush a kiss over her lips. "Was the gay one cute?"

She pushed at him, laughing in response, before she hooked her fingers through his belt loops. Newt could drive her to distraction sometimes, but far too often he knew exactly what to say. It was something she noticed more and more, especially when they fought about work - or more rarely their personal problems - where he could hit hard, he knew where to hit, but more often than not he didn't. Even when they didn't agree, they didn't devalue each other... and the good-natured hard-vs-soft debates never grew mean.

"Sasha and Alexis are getting married," Hermione said, out of the blue. The marriage itself wasn't out of the blue. The two of them had been paired together by the Russian government based on drift compatibility. The breakdown of Sasha's marriage had followed soon after, and divorce, and the emotional affair had soon turned physical. "We got an invitation."

"We?"

"Me plus one," Hermione admitted. "Alexis said he would have _words_ with my boyfriend."

"And that's supposed to make me want to go to a wedding?!" Newt asked. He started to work at the buttons of his shirt, and Hermione joined him in the effort.

The two of them finally slipped into bed, Newt curling up behind Hermione and pulling her to his chest.

"Do you... is that something you want?" Newt asked.

"Hmm?"

"A ring, a word other than 'boyfriend', your mother to stop fretting over you getting married and your sister to stop laughing about how much you're living in sin?"

Hermione honestly didn't know. "And your mother doesn't bother you about it?"

Newt snorted. "You've met her. Her last name isn't Schwartz because she kept her last name after the marriage, her last name is Schwartz because she and dad aren't married, and they've been together... thirty years, I guess."

She tried to imagine that, thirty years with Newton, no ring, just... Gottlieb and Geiszler, living life out of wedlock... No, she did think she would like to be married, just... "After."

"After what?" Newt pressed his nose to her ear.

"After..." She tried to imagine that, a dress, a party, getting married and dancing while the world was trampled by monsters... "After we've won."

She pretended not to feel the tightening of Newt's arms around her waist, and the soft exhale against her neck.

Newt ended up in Lima for their anniversary. The timezones didn't quite add up, not really, but Newt Skyped her at lunch time, around when she was getting ready for bed.

"I bet you're elbow deep in guts," she said. Thankfully Newt had aimed the camera so she didn't have to _see_ , but she could still hear the occasional sickening squelching as he worked his way through the bits.

"I am," Newt answered. "Only one place I'd rather be."

"Elbow deep in guts with me across the room yelling at you about how unsanitary it is?" she answered.

"Alright, yes... I miss you." He paused, but it wasn't the sort of thing that needed a real answer, a 'I miss you, too', that went without saying any longer between them. When they were away, they missed each other; when they were on the same continent they shook it with their yelling. "I had plans... I was going to take you for noodles... I'm sure I would have had a speech pulled together."

Newt glanced over at the camera, torn between looking up at the camera itself and where Hermione knew that her face would be.

"I love you. Love of my life sort of thing. And... if I didn't have enough incentive to save the world, there's always the fact that I don't get to marry you until the kaiju are defeated so... Hermione... would you give me one more thing to fight for, and agree to marry me?"

Hermione sat, shocked, for several long seconds, trying to put everything into place, trying to... she loved Newt, so much, couldn't imagine a life without him, so of course she nodded. "Yes, of course, idiot."

Newt - because he was Newt - took her out to hold his hand while he got a pair of thin black bands tattooed around his left ring finger. He just gave her a ring, ceramic.

Dr. Shen - Natalie - was the first to notice the ring, two days after Newt had slipped it on her finger. "Did you get married, Dr. Gottlieb?"

"No, I got engaged."

The news brought the entire lab to silence.

"What?"

It was Dr. Gonzales who cleared his throat, and answered for the lab at large. "Well, we didn't know you were seeing anyone."

"Well, I have been, for two years." She went back to her chalkboard and continued her calculations. She was confident that they would be able to locate whatever Breach existed between their world and wherever the kaijus were originating in short order. "And he proposed on our anniversary."

"Was it romantic?" Dr. Shen asked.

"No, he was dissecting something at the time."

"Sounds like Dr. Geiszler!" Gonzales answered, with a tone that suggested how wildly preposterous that was, but then Hermione turned back at him to arch an eyebrow as if to say 'what's it to you' and his eyes grew wide. "You and Dr. Geiszler?!"

All work stopped, because apparently it was _far_ more important to hear the story of Newt hitting on Hermione in Seoul, and their long distance relationship through the next year and their not long distance relationship since then.

"So when's the wedding."

" _After_ ," Hermione answered, very firm. "After we've sealed the rift that is allowing the kaijus to enter our world."

That was what finally deflated marriage talk, and tittering, and speculative glances. Until Newt came over with some of his new data from Lima on the physiology of the kaiju.

 _Everyone_ watched them, their every move.

"What the hell is going on?" Newt whispered as he looked over the equations Hermione was working on.

"They found out we're engaged."

"So that's why everyone was staring at me over in biochem... I thought I had my fly unzipped or something..." He glanced over his shoulder, and then back at Hermione. "Wanna make out?"

"No."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"You're lying so much it's not even funny."

"You know I don't like public displays."

"I know you hate it with the new scientists flirt with me."

"And you think the solution is some possessive display of saliva exchange?"

"No, but I'd like it," Newt admitted, low.

"Fine," She answered. "Don't mess up my hair."

Newt, the traitor, was an expert at not messing up her hair, but he accomplished it with a warm hand at the back of her neck, and then a teasing brush of lips, and then his other hand at her waist. He had a gift for making her forget where she was, and that they weren't alone, so much so that they'd been kissing for easily ten minutes before she broke away, only to have him lean in, mouth pressed to her ear.

"Come back to our room and ride me into the mattress."

And Hermione, because she did love Newt, and she did want him, grabbed him around the wrist and gave him a tug.

"Science," Newt explained, to the room at large, and fled hand in hand with her.

Hermione could never decide if she was proud or offended that there was never a single question of whether or not a buttoned down, straight laced, _conservative_ looking woman was appropriate for Newt again.

*

Newt glanced down at his notes, trying to sort out his next approach to the gene sequencing issue when it came to the kaiju. There were so many questions, and the bits that _might_ be DNA were so... _difficult_. He glowered down at his tablet and tried to make sense of it.

"Trouble in paradise?" Tendo asked, sitting down across from Newt.

"Huh?" Newt glanced up, and then followed Tendo's head tilt to where Hermione was holding court a few tables down.

"No dinner with the missus?"

"That's _doctor_ ," Newt answered, barely audible. "No, I'm not in the dog house, 'Mione is working on a theory and does not require my input. I would be a distraction." It was the sort of thing he could say without any ire, because they did say that sometimes: 'go away, distracting', and they could respect that.

"How do you do it?" Tendo asked, glancing back over to Hermione, and then back to Newt. "You two just... cats and dogs."

"Oh." Newt figured the sex didn't hurt. "We just... agree on all the important stuff."

"You two fight _constantly_." 

They loved each other, they knew science would be the key to stopping the kaiju, they knew that pointed and critical assessments of the weaknesses in each other's theories were paramount, and they kept their quarters tidy. "Well, I'm not in the dog house, trust me."

Hermione proved exactly how much he wasn't in the dog house later that night, by sliding into bed behind him and rubbing her nose against his spine. "Awake?"

"Mrrr."

She snorted. "Sorry, just been tired lately."

Newt drew her in for a hug, hands tangling up in her hair. "Luvoo. Tensadme."

"I'm sure that made sense in your head," she answered, and pecked him on the nose. "You can explain it tomorrow... and I love you, too."

He woke up with Hermione sprawled on him.

They worked. That was what seemed to constantly mystify the new recruits - who watched them for how to explain their relationship. There was nothing to explain, they simply fit, in the lab, in life, in bed, and anyone who didn't understand just didn't understand.

It was definitely worth it when Hermione would come up next to him and all but sit on his lap at lunch or dinner, and Newt just slid an arm around her back and she just fit right into him.

"Ugh."

"Mmm."

"Dietrich is having a kid."

"Gottlieblings!"

"...I'm never sleeping with you again."

"That is a lie and you know it."

Hermione set her head on his shoulder and he reached up to massage her neck, earning a happy purr. "So now Mother has decided that nothing will do but for me to have a child _before_ I'm thirty. I had my PhD when I was twenty-five, but apparently I'm incomplete if I haven't reproduced in the next two years."

Newt sat, trying to decide how he felt about that. "Which would she be more offended by: no child or one out of wedlock?"

"Well, she's not getting one anytime soon."

"After?" Newt asked, wishing like hell he thought that would be any time soon.

The answering nod made his chest tighten.

"I would like children," Newt admitted. "Two, at least."

"Says the only child..." She leaned in and kissed his shoulder. "I was considering making plans. You're the biologist. I'll be at peak reproductive ability in the next few years - hence my mother's hysterics - and... we have no end in sight."

The idea of retiring somewhere, hiding, waiting for someone else to solve the problem while the two of them were selfish and had the children they both wanted was appealing for a second, but they wouldn't be together if they weren't in this together.

It was the continuation of all of the little plans that they had for _After_ , an After that Newt wasn't entirely sure would ever come. Marriage, a child, a house - or three, his job back at MIT or something similar, another child...

He took to keeping a picture of a random little country house in England in his lab. That exemplified everything he wanted for After.

When Hermione's math finally isolated the Breach in early 2018, Newt thought that might be the end, the beginning of After, and they celebrated that night with too much alcohol and sex, and a hangover the next morning. They stood, hand in hand, towards the back of LOCCENT when a jaeger team made a run at the Breach, and the two of them stood, stone faced, as the negative report came through.

"Back to the lab," she said, and Newt went, even though there was nothing either of them could do.

He studied the little bits of flotsam at the throat, he studied the topology of the Breach for any anomalies or other data that might be useful. He genotyped the local flora, he pushed everyone to think outside of the box, he listened to the radio waves that had escaped from _the other side_ and tried to figure them out. He didn't sleep for the three days it took Hermione to wear herself out, to run herself down, and to flag.

When he finally went back to the infirmary - picked up some sedatives for the pair of them - and went to math side of the lab, and put an arm around her shoulder, the room let out an audible sigh.

"Why didn't it work?!" Hermione yelled, ripping her jacket off as soon as they were alone in their quarters. She threw it with enough force that Newt thought he heard one of the seams strain. "The thing is _open_ , we were able to map its topography when it was open! There is no reason it shouldn't..."

She jabbed a finger at his chest, two, and then spun around to yank her blouse free.

Newt recognized the signs of a fiancée who was going to be upset with her ripped blouse tomorrow, and came up to her, slowly unbuttoning her shirt, and placing a soft kiss at her temple. "We'll figure this out. Your math was just-- incomplete."

"Math is all I have, Newton. Math is the universe written on reality. Math is what will save us and allow us..." Her voice wavered, and when Newt pulled her in she started to cry against his chest.

"You have me," Newt promised. "I'm motivated. We will figure this out."

They slept for almost a full day, off and on, Newt fed her, they showered together, and went back to bed... and when he walked into the soft science side, glanced at all of them, and frowned. "Alright, back to the drawing board."

.3.

Hermione came to to the sound of Newt arguing with someone at full volume. It was a sound she was far, far too familiar with after almost a two and a half years of sharing a Shatterdome, a lab, and a bed with the man. Her head _hurt_ , it was throbbing, and when she reached up to touch her head she found one hand was stuck with an IV. A few seconds of further observation found she was in one of the infirmary beds, laying on a cot, staring at the ceiling.

"Newton, honestly."

"'Mione." Newt was hovering over her a moment later, green eyes wide and worried, hair a mess. "Are you alright? How are you feeling? What--?"

"That's enough, Dr. Geiszler," the doctor said, coming into view at her other side. "And I'm sorry, Dr. Gottlieb, but it would be best if Dr. Geiszler stopped disturbing the technicians and other medical staff who are just trying to do their jobs."

"Newt," she said, and he popped into view again above her, slightly blurry before he snapped into focus. "Go back to work, or to bed, I will be home when we are done here. You are not a doctor."

"Six doctorates--"

"And none of them are in medicine, go home."

Newt kissed her, softly, and then headed out from the exam area.

"I apologize," she said to the doctor - Weiss, she thought - before she tried to figure out why she was here. "Fretting fiancé is not the usual look on him. What happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

She thought back, trying to remember how she had gotten here. "I was in the lab..." That much she remembered. "Shen was showing us some simulations... they weren't very good." She needed to remember what wasn't good about them, but that could wait. “And... I fell."

Why had she fallen?

"Do you remember what caused you to fall?" Weiss asked, mirroring Hermione's own thought.

"I--" She wiggled her toes, they seemed to move fine. "I almost... I don't know. My feet weren't under me, and I was... dizzy, I guess?"

"So you were dizzy before you fell?"

"I think I was."

"Have you noticed any difficulty concentrating or focusing lately?"

And the questions continued; hand squeezes, watching her walk - fine - and finally taking her for a head scan... and... well... an entirely different doctor came back with her films, which he brought up on a computer for her to see. "So, there's no bleeding or swelling from where you hit your head."

"I'm sensing a 'but' here," Hermione said, nerves on high alert instantly.

"The CT scan isn't the right tool for a lot of jobs," second doc said. "Checking for bleeds, yes, checking for other things... it's less useful. I'm going to want you to get an MRI, as soon as possible."

"Because there's _something_ on the scan that's not right?"

He nodded. "It... could be nothing."

"Or it could be...?" She trailed off, waiting, prompting, dread growing ever more present as the damn doctor would not give her _data_.

"Lesions, six spots." He then pulled the images closer and pointed to them, small, but certainly now that she was looking for them, she saw them. "It could be artifacts of the machine, movement during the scan, and they could be entirely benign."

"But I was dizzy," she said.

The doctor looked down for a moment, and then nodded. "There was also some weakness on your left side."

"Worst case?" Hermione asked. She needed data, she needed risk analysis, she needed to know what might be coming.

"There are several neurological degenerative conditions that might create spots like this, or cancer, but those are the absolute worst case. This is why we need the MRI." He cleared his throat, and came to sit slightly closer, more intimate, presumably he was supposed to be friendly. "I know most of the people here don't have the best local support network..."

"I live with my fiancé. I will be fine."

She managed not to cry as she changed back into her clothes and as she made her way towards her quarters. The words tumbled around in her mind, trying to go in, trying to penetrate. Cancer, some degenerative condition... a spate of dizziness in her lab might signal the beginning of a decline in her health. She might be dying right now. World on the edge of a knife and she might die of something so mundane and ordinary as improperly dividing cells. 

She made it to their quarters, and she fumbled with the door only to have Newt open it, and she almost collapsed into his arms. 

"Hey..." He kissed her forehead. "Hey, what's going on? Didn't they bring you back? Do they not need to keep--"

Hermione put a thumb against his lips. "Will you love me if I'm bald?"

"Mione, what--?" He said, almost comical around her thumb, but she pressed it tighter, shushing him again.

"Newt. Answer me," she said, firm as she could. "Will you love me if I'm bald?"

"Yes," Newt answered, closing the door behind her and pulling her bodily further into the room. "Yes, I will love you no matter what."

In spite of her wringing it out of him, the answer comforted her more than it should have. She let herself be led around the room, and allowed herself to take comfort in Newt's arms as he did so.

"There was... evidence of lesions on my CT scan. They want me to get an MRI as soon as I am able."

Newt stopped his movement of her around the room. "Lesions?"

"You're a biologist I'm sure you know what lesions are!" She snapped.

Newt pulled her into a tight hug, kissed her, hard, and then sat her on their bed. "Hermione, I know we've only promised to eventually get around to the vows, the 'for better or worse', but I have our ring tattooed around my finger. It can't come off. I will love you if you're bald, I will love you no matter what. I will shave my own head if I have to."

She laughed. "Don't do that." Her fingers threaded up into his hair. "I love your hair." But it eased some bit of her fear, that she and Newton - even with the ring and the promises - weren't something sacred enough for Newt to fight to preserve. It was easy to think of this as something convenient for him.

"Maybe I should ask you if you'd love me if I was bald. I've got a bald uncle on my mother's side. I could start thinning any day. Would you still love me then?" He asked, setting her down on the bed, kissing her so she couldn't answer.

He barely left her side for the few days it took for them to get a semi-local appointment. They ended up in Japan, and Hermione laid back while she was magnetically imaged, and the images were poured over, and Newt sat with her, holding her hand, fingers teasing her ring, fingers running through her hair. Her fear mounted. It was irrational but she did not force herself to think of the good outcomes; it was the height of irrationality to expect positive thinking to have an impact on the result.

Hermione squeezed Newt's hand so hard she almost broke it as the doctor informed her that he suspected Multiple Sclerosis, and would need to perform a lumbar puncture.

Newt sat with her, hand on her face, as her knees tucked up to her chest and she sat, immobile, through the needle into her spine.

"Hey, look on the bright side, at least you don't have tattoos." Newt said, afterwards, as she was being cleaned up. "I heard they have to go in through your neck if you have tattoos on your back."

"You can't get an epidural either," the tech - a pretty young woman - said. "And you'll want one."

"Not anytime soon," she whispered, as the tech left, and Newt gave Hermione a kiss on her nose as he helped her back into her clothes. "And of course you want those monsters all over your body. I'm the one who has to see you naked."

It was an old argument, it always was, and Hermione had more than appreciated it when his chest had healed - even if she laughed over him not getting his nipples done - and he was more than happy to have his fiancée happy with her unmarked skin.

They stayed in Tokyo for three days, telecommuting to Hong Kong from the Tokyo Shatterdome, but mostly using it as a vacation they hadn't had in years.

The news, just before they went home, wasn't good: MS, as expected, and Newt held her as she cried so that she would be all cried out when they finally made it home to Hong Kong.

*

New recruits came fewer and farther between, but the few who did join up were quickly schooled in the knowledge that Newt and Hermione were a couple. That suited Newt just fine, as some days he just didn't want to deal with the flirtations, even if it was nice to know he still had it. It was a stark reminder of something else, though: no one ever asked if Hermione was single, and Newt doubted it was because of the ring on her finger.

Hermione's health was... deteriorating slowly. There were good days and bad days, days when she ached and hurt, days when her vision swam, days when she couldn't walk save for the cane that had become a constant presence in their life.

Newt pretended not to hear the whispers as time moved on, that he should _unburden_ himself of Hermione.

"Bad day?" Hermione asked, collapsing onto her face on the bed, stripped down to her underwear.

"I think I'm supposed to ask that," he said, ignoring the question for a moment as he smeared lotion over his own hands, warmed it for a moment, and then started to massage at the tense joints of her shoulder.

"You're upset."

"No I'm not. Why would I be upset?" He was upset. He tried to push it down, unhooked her bra and continued to massage down her back.

"If you don't--" Hermione paused, groaning into the bed while Newt pressed his thumbs down her spine, easing the knots there. "Newt... please... I need data."

He sighed. "It's nothing you should need to hear."

And yet it was obvious Hermione had a good guess: "'What does he see in her?' 'She's so broken, why does he stick around?' 'He could do so much better'."

Newt blinked back a pair of tears, but they ended up falling on Hermione's back anyway. "Something like that." He patted her side, and Hermione rolled onto her back, pulling one knee up to her chest, and Newt helped her press it even closer. " _I_ shouldn't have to hear it. I hate to think you hear it."

"But I'm not exactly the woman you fell in love with, am I?" She asked, switching legs. Newt changed the position of his hands.

"You're smarter," Newt said. "Wiser." He kissed her knee - the closest skin to his mouth. "You're stronger... you're real, and you're mine. You're better than the woman I fell in love with. Everyone who says those things doesn't realize you loved me when I was the broken one."

Hermione snorted at him. "You're not broken."

"Most psychiatrist would disagree with you, although they wouldn't use the term 'broken'. Neither would your doctor." Newt changed the position of his hands again, stretching Hermione's hamstrings with the push of her legs. "Want to take a walk?"

"I rarely enjoy being made a spectacle." She used her position to push her feet against his chest. "But you're right, I've been losing tone. Most fiancés wouldn't get away with implying that, you know."

"I implied nothing of the sort," Newt answered. "Just that if my beloved Dr. Gottlieb wanted to take a walk around the Shatterdome, and then retire for a vigorous lovemaking, that would be my idea of a perfect evening."

They walked, longer than Hermione probably should have, but she was feeling good, and they needed to take advantage of that.

"Newton," Hermione said, when they were tangled up in the bowels of the Shatterdome, away from prying eyes and ears, her arm hooked through his. "2024 is going to be a bad year. I think... the numbers say that we might be facing a kaiju attack as often as once a month, maybe more towards the end of the year. The Breach has largely stabilized and that means nothing good."

"And we still have no way to penetrate it," Newt said. "We're not thinking broadly enough, there has to be _something_ we could do. All of my research suggests that these kaiju share so many genetic markers, there might be genetically programmed neural memory... I don't know."

"Don't..." Hermione stopped, and then tilted her head against his shoulder. "I know you have your wild theories, but... we have more options to pursue, more avenues to explore."

"What if wild theories are what we need, 'Mione?" The two of them kept walking. "We have so many avenues to explore? Why haven't we sealed the Breach yet? Why do I get calls and emails from my father-in-law on an almost weekly basis discussing how I should _'talk sense to you'_ and get you to come home?"

"He's not your father-in-law," she answered, under her breath, because she would go to semantics when they were arguing something more and different from that.

"We've been engaged for over eight years, I'm an unofficial son-in-law at this point. He calls me 'son'."

"Your mother calls me Doctor Gottlieb."

"My mother calls _me_ Doctor Geiszler."

"And you shouldn't answer his calls."

"And you shouldn't tell me that we should be shutting down avenues of inquiry because they are scary."

"Don't tell me you don't run off to every site in the hope that one of the secondary brains is intact enough for you to consider Drifting with," Hermione answered, annoyed.

"No one's even tried."

"Because no one is so idiotic as to assume that would end in anything other than you dead on the floor!"

The two of them dropped it after that. Newt didn't have a brain to Drift with, and... well until he did he had no ground to start working on his theories and there was nothing else for it. They had dinner together, quiet, talking about nothing in particular... Alison was pregnant and Tendo was over the moon. Newt knew it took all of Hermione's self-control to not inform Tendo that his child, his son, would be born into the apocalypse, or that the apocalypse had already happened and they were simply waiting for the aftermath.

They rung in the new year on the roof of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, had a sip of champagne between them, and made love like the world was ending, because Hermione's math said it would be this year - 2025 at the latest.

.4.

Hermione had long ago learned that toughing out her flares of symptoms would, in the end, land her in the hospital for more time than it would have taken to be treated, so on her fourth day of nausea, dizziness, and increased fatigue, she made her way down to the lightly staffed infirmary and signed herself in while Newt was wrapped up in his music and a dissection.

The last kaiju attack had only been three days ago, Newt had his _parts_ home to Hong Kong after that, and Hermione's math said they could expect 3 attacks in December... her math said it would grow worse when 2025 came in earnest.

"What seems to be the problem, Hermione?" Dr. Weiss asked. He was older now, with grey hair spreading well past his temples.

"Fatigue, nausea, dizziness, weakness. It's been worse than normal."

Weiss nodded and made a few notes. He held out his hands, and Hermione didn't even need to be prompted to squeeze them. Hermione sat through the reflex testing - not great, but no worse than usual - and an eye exam - surprisingly good - only to wonder what it might be if not an immediate neurological problem.

"Have you been eating more?"

Hermione shrugged. "Newt has been stress eating, which means he drags more back from the commissary."

"No one's diets have been very good the last few months," Weiss said, pulling out a few tubes for blood. "I'm going to check for a few more routine things, and then if that comes back negative we'll send you for another MRI, but I'm not noticing any change in your neurological response, your sight, or your reflexes."

"That's good."

"It's been almost six months since your last flare, and you've never much taken it easy, so it wouldn't be surprising if you found yourself on the leading edge of a flare."

They had the actual answer three days later.

"What?"

"Pregnant," Weiss repeated. "We'd need to do an ultrasound to get an idea of how far along you are."

"I'm on birth control," she protested. "I had my last period..." She thought back, tried to decide when it was, realized she couldn't pin it down precisely. "I miss periods all the time."

Weiss didn't answer right away, instead he sat beside her on the exam table and gave her a gentle look. "I know, I put your implant in myself, but they are fallible."

"0.5%"

He nodded.

"I want it gone."

"I-- I'll put in a request for the necessary medications."

She immediately thought better of her first response, and sighed. "I-- what's the effect of the MS on... everything."

"You're less likely to flare while you're pregnant," Weiss said, which meant that most of the rest would be bad news if that was how he led. "Postpartum you're more likely to have a flare. While you're pregnant your balance will be worse, you'll have a greater risk of falls, and you'll be more tired. You'll almost certainly require a C-Section over a vaginal birth, and we'll... be very close friends for the duration. I'd recommend bed rest if I thought you'd take it."

"I won't."

Weiss smiled. "Either way, I suggest you talk with Dr. Geiszler. It's your body, and a pregnancy with MS is not without potential complications, but either way you will want to have his support."

She returned to the lab and stared at numbers that were no more hopeful than they were a week ago. They would all be dead in... three months, tops. The small clump of cells inside her would be expelled from her dead, regardless. In that way, it seemed so fatalistic and useless to even consider the odds.

Maybe she and Newt should have had a child, years ago, after he had proposed. It would have been... six, maybe even seven years old now, old enough to fear its parents' fear.

"Alright, 'Mione?"

Hermione realized her hand was clenched over her gut, and she let go of the neatly buttoned shirt. "No. No, Newton, I am not alright."

It took him a few minutes - he was elbow deep in kaiju guts - but he did make it over to her side and looked over at the math as though that was the nexus of all of her fears. Hermione tried to think about it. Newt might have understood it better, a tiny little clump of cells causing her to think about the future, fret about it in a way she hadn't even a month ago.

Her data was still hopeless. Having another thing to fight for would not give them clarity or hope, just terrify them.

"We'll find something," he promised her.

"I hope so," she admitted.

He tilted his head towards her, frowned at her choice of words. Hermione never 'hoped' for anything.

"I should have married you years ago."

Newt pulled her in and kissed her temple. "We could still flag down the Marshal, have a real wedding night. It's fine. What would I fight for if not finally getting you to marry me?"

Hermione knew it was so much more complicated than that. They weren't here because of each other, it was just bearable because of each other. She knew what he would have fought for, though. She reached out and tangled her fingers and his, pulling his hand so it was low across her waist, and she left it there. Newt stepped behind her and hugged her, obviously seeing it as a request for a hug, which it was, but missing the larger context.

She stood through him holding her, absent-mindedly stroking her belly with his thumb, before she felt him pause, and his head jerk up from her shoulder where he'd rested it. "Are you--?"

"About eight weeks. I thought I was about to flare, but... apparently..."

"You shouldn't be here," Newt said, pulling away and turning to face her.

"Newton Geiszler, we have seen this thing through for ten years, I'm not going to stop--"

"Kaiju Blue? There are silicate god knows what and who knows what sort of vapors and--"

"Newt. You know as well as I that the chances of this child seeing the light of day are functionally nil. Theoretical concerns of fetal health seem superfluous." Hermione put her hands on his chest, and pushed him far enough away so that he could look into her eyes. "For the last few years I have pushed my body beyond where it could reasonably be expected to go, because that was what was needed. There will be no future for our child if I relax, if I take it slow, or if I leave you to face this on your own."

She was unsure there would be a future no matter what.

"Yes," Newt said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "You're right."

"As usual."

"Don't push it." Newt slid his hand back to her belly, though, it was... it was an odd feeling, not an unfamiliar touch between them, but one instilled with new meeting that Hermione wasn't quite comfortable yet. "Are you alright? This-- it's big, and nothing you'd wanted right now."

She placed her hand over his, hugging his hand to her and leaving the two of them locked together like that. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't have enough data."

But Newton had asked, and she did owe him at least some sort of answer.

"We've both always wanted children. I know I always said Later or After, but it was never _no_ , simply..."

"After," Newt said, nose pressed to her neck.

"And now there is this microscopic biomass that is..." She closed her eyes, even if Newt couldn't see her eyes, and then she bowed her head. "It is this reminder that for ten years we have had each other and yet we have not had the life - the _world_ \- that we would want for a child. It could be perfect and flawless, with no predisposition to any of the variety of frailties and ailments that it should be genetically or environmentally susceptible to and it is still... I discussed the possibility of abortion with Dr. Weiss."

Newt's hand tightened against her, only for a moment, and Hermione allowed it, didn't blame him for that first response, because her fiancé had wanted a child for years, and Hermione had wanted a child as well, but she had distance that Newt never had. "If that's what you need, 'Mione."

Neither of them were particularly religious, and their families weren't really the sort to dismiss practical needs in such a situation. "I will decide in the next week or so. December will be hard enough as it is, I expect you will be away frequently with the increase in Kaiju attacks."

She knew Newt wanted to promise that he would be there, every moment, for her, whether she chose to terminate or keep the pregnancy, and they both knew it was a lie, just as it was a lie that they would be able to give their little clump of cells a life in a good world with a future.

*

Newt knew things were hard for Hermione. The pregnancy was a curveball she'd never expected - _they'd_ never expected - and Newt was still trying to process it himself. He had wanted a child for years, wanted some chubby cheeked little devil with brown hair and a fast mind. Their lives were far from ordinary, however, and he'd known that a child, a life, and a house in the country wasn't something they would ever have.

That didn't make it hurt less when everything he wanted was here, just not right.

Hermione was sleeping, somehow she always could, even when the world was crashing down around them, but Newt was up, his hand over his fiancée's belly. The Kaiju attacks had given him a sense of purpose, had put him and Hermione on a course that brought them to each other's hearts, and they were tearing the world apart and ripping apart the woman he loved, and Newt would have done it all over again, if only to have ten years at Hermione's side.

He leaned in, and kissed her square on the belly button. Her stomach was still flat, with not even the faintest swell to actually signify the pregnancy, but he tried to consider the tiny child inside of her. It would probably never be born. Newt would die fighting, and so would Hermione, she would have nothing less.

If he thought for a moment his father-in-law's Wall would keep the Kaiju out, he and Hermione would be on the next flight to Boston, or Berlin, to live out the rest of their days - not really, but Newt liked to dream. Instead they were here.

"Do you think your mother would let me name you Isaac if you were a boy?" He asked the non-existent swell.

Hermione's hand threaded through his hair, signaling she was not nearly as asleep as Newt had thought she was.

"Sorry, sorry. I know you're still deciding."

"It doesn't even have ears."

"I know..." Newt's far more up on biology than Hermione is, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't want to talk to his would-have-been child.

"Come up here," Hermione said, punctuating the request with a gentle tug on his hair.

He went, he kissed her, the two of them slid together, and that was how Newt reminded himself to not let fear, anxiety, and hopelessness take him over. They were the loves of each other's lives, they were everything, each other's whole worlds, and they would make this work. They would save the fucking world.

Hermione didn't really decide on whether or not to abort, they went through the month of December in a state of unending panic, three attacks, each of them sent Newt across the world, mostly to the Americas, to pick apart the pieces of Kaiju and bring them back to Hong Kong, where Hermione's math said the same thing it always did.

He made up his mind just after Christmas - he and Hermione had shared an orange and made love, that was what Christmas was in the Shatterdome - and Newt had sent a few details to his mother, arrangements... a will, in essence. He'd acquired a functional piece of a brain from the most recent Kaiju attack, damaged, but still conducting, still aware enough to move against the glass enclosure where Newt kept it.

"I'm going to figure you out," he told the thing. There was so much more to know, so many questions that Newt hadn't answered even in over a decade, and they were keeping him from understanding the threat, keeping him from a world where he had a future and a life.

Mutavore hit Sydney, destroyed the Wall there, and made it clear that they were truly standing on the knife's edge. Hermione still hadn't decided, one way or the other, on the matter of keeping their child. He barely slept, Hermione didn't sleep much more.

"The one good thing," Hermione said, before she climbed up the ladder to go to work on her calculations. "Is that although I am more tired, I have found myself less dizzy... and more hungry."

Newt could have commented that you wouldn't know to look at her. She was almost four months pregnant, and it barely showed; her neat, trim little knee-length skirts still fit, her slacks still fit. Some of it was hidden under a thick sweater, but the differences in her body were only noticeable when she was naked. It probably helped her, kept it from being as real as it would have been, but to Newt it said that, as usual, Hermione was not taking as much care of herself as she should.

Pentecost and Hansen rejected his request for parts to Drift with the Kaiju brain, Hermione looked at him as though she didn't know him.

"It would kill you!" She argued, as though that mattered to Newton in the face of... everything: science, discovery, his family, his fiancé.

Newt was most of the way through his planning phase when Hermione came into the lab and wrapped an arm around his waist. "Come to bed."

He did, but he was back out as soon as Hermione had dropped off, grabbing bits and pieces from everywhere in the Shatterdome, pulling things together, plugging them in, clicking, connecting, programming - although he'd done most of that earlier that day.

This was for his future, their future, he needed to know, he needed to pull apart the secrets of the Kaiju mind and find out what made them tick and how they could get through the Breach. That was the most important thing: the Breach. If it was so simple as strapping a thermonuclear device on the back of a Jaeger, it would have worked years ago.

Hermione could theorize that the Breach was stabilizing, but it never had before, and the Kaiju were getting bigger and bigger, and their DNA seemed to be all the same, and Newt didn't know what that meant. Clones? Budding? That had to mean something, it had to, and he needed to know.

This was the end of everything. He trusted Hermione's math. He trusted Hermione with his life, with his heart, and he _knew_ she was right that they would be facing Kaiju faster and faster. Her math had predicted those fluctuations with incredible accuracy, even from the beginning, but Hermione's method couldn't give them an answer to why.

And _why_ and _how_ were what was going to save them in the end.

"Human-Kaiju Drift Experiment, Take One."

Newt really hoped he didn't die. He had the recorder on though, hopefully any information he managed to extract would be visualizable. Headspace was profoundly tricky to sort out, so he hoped he would live long enough to get something down, but... he needed this, Hermione needed this.

"And, just so you know... Isaac, even if it's a girl. Isaac. You two drove me to this. You make me so, so much better. I... I fell in love with you the minute we met. Every time I do something, it's for you, 'Mione, always... unscientific aside to the aside: not horrible wedding vows. Maybe." It was possible too little sleep and too little medication and a lot of things that said he might not have been thinking the most clearly but...

"Going in in three, two, one..." He winced as the Drift overtook him.

Images.

Flashes.

Emotions.

Nothing that he could lock down.

Grab at.

Try to understand.

"Forget the Drift, _I'm_ going to kill you!" Hermione's voice came, her hand on his cheek, against his nose. "Newton! Newton!"

"My one and only angel."

"Yes. Going to kill you."

"Pentecost."

"He's going to kill you, too, but only after I get you first!"

She helped him up, though, got him water, wiped his nose, and got his glasses from wherever they had fallen on the floor. His hands shook as he brought the water to his lips, tried to drink, tried to make sense of what he'd seen... _grown_ Kaiju, clones, not truly clones just being assembled and stitched together, fought in the rings to see who became prime.

Newt tried to explain it and put it into words, but there was nothing that made sense and nothing he could tell Hermione or Pentecost that would explain it.

It took him minutes, maybe hours, to come back down from the high he'd been on from the Drift, and for Pentecost to introduce him to Hannibal Chau's record.

"You're going to Drift again?" Hermione asked, as Newt grabbed his jacket and the small card that would lead him to Chau. "With another Kaiju brain..."

"'Mione, you didn't see it, you didn't _feel_ it. They're coming for us. They are going to take possession of our world and slaughter everyone." Newt reached out and brushed his hands down her face. "Promise me one thing... two things. Promise me two things."

"What?" She asked, but she was smiling again, not a full, bright smile, but the 'Newton you idiot' one that he also loved.

"Stay safe."

She didn't tell him she couldn't make that promise, even though she couldn't. Instead, Hermione leaned in and brushed her lips against his. "And the other?"

"Marry me, After, right After. The _hour_ we win, because we will win."

"I will marry you, although, I'll remind you I already agreed to that." She leaned in, close enough to press their bodies together and to remind him how much he loved when they had a few moments to just be together and love each other and not worry about the future. "Go save the world."

That thought sustained him for the hours it took to make his way through Hong Kong, to find Hannibal, to run away from a Kaiju, to watch the horizon as Gipsy and Otachi fought to the death, back to Chau's and to be nearly eaten _again_ , only for Hermione to come out into the field to find him, bringing his makeshift Kaiju-Drifting Pons along with her.

Hermione, of course, with all her usual sense of perspective, was complaining now that there were only two Kaiju in the Breach. Newt did his best to tune her out. He didn't often ignore her entirely - they had been in a successful relationship for over a decade - but in that moment he needed to focus on this.

"Hermione, I haven't exactly had a very good day, we can fight more over your math _After_." Newt hated After. Fortune favored the brave, and he was through with this waiting, with this setting aside what he wanted so that he could wait for After. "I have to Drift before brain death sets in and we lose our last chance at this."

He slid the neural spike in, and he hopped off of the baby Kaiju's head, trying not to think about babies suddenly bursting out of wombs. He wasn't sure he'd ever enjoy horror films again.

Before he knew what was happening, Hermione was punching in commands to split the load between two Pons caps.

"'Mione, you..." He looked over at her, down at the non-swell of her belly. "It's... you really shouldn't..."

"If I want to have someone to marry After, I need to keep you from being an idiot. I see it as my primary duty as your wife... and _that_ is my wedding vow to you, Newton."

"You listened?" He winced. "I--"

"Shut up," she answered, leaning in and kissing him. "We're going to own this."

The smallest, tiniest part of him was worried about stepping into Hermione's head after so many years. They didn't have secrets - at least Newt didn't - but he was nervous, just... worried that maybe there was this tiny chance that things weren't as good as he wanted them to be, that Hermione regretted tying herself to him, that _something_ was broken between them.

He shouldn't have worried.

From their first moment they were on the same page, when they fought, when they fucked, and when the fucking became making love...

He slid into Hermione's mind as though they were a comfortable pair of shoes, well-loved and well-worn and a perfect match even if the feet that wore them were a bit uneven. The Kaiju was something else, though, rough and hard, something they had to fight to wring information out of... and when they did...

Hermione vomited into a nearby toilet.

But after she'd vomited into a toilet, and wiped her mouth, they realized the full scope of their danger.

It was terrifying, in retrospect, to realize how close they had come to failure, to not making it in time and not giving them the intelligence they needed...

And yet, when they heard Mako and Raleigh's voices, proclaiming victory and that they were both still alive, that was all that mattered, and they ended up slumped against each other and the consoles, heads touching and sharing the lingering buzz of the Drift.

"We should go to the infirmary," Hermione said, a few minutes later. "You didn't even get looked at after your first Drift."

"Yeah, yeah..." Newt said, pushing himself off of the console.

Tendo glanced over at the two of them, smirking. "You're the one who wanted to marry her, buddy.

"Still do," Newt answered, fingers twining through hers. "Still do."

.5.

They'd won.

The Breach was sealed.

It was, somehow, against all odds, After.

Hermione made it all the way to the infirmary, Newt's arm threaded through hers, before she vomited again.

"Doc!" She heard Newt yell into the infirmary at large, only for a disheveled looking Dr. Weiss to come out from his office.

"Is it true?"

"Hooray, we won," Newt said. "'Mione and I Drifted with a Kaiju and she's vomited twice in the last... hour, hour and a half."

She found herself helped into one of the beds, and Newt worked at stripping her down. As much as it made her feel like an invalid - just a tiny bit - it was nice to just shut her eyes and allow Newt to take care of her, just a little bit. The gown was annoying, and a distressing reminder of so many conditions, but after she was seated, and Newt had a hand on her knee, she let herself... relax.

"God, it's really over," she said, not quite believing it even as she whispered up to the ceiling. "And you smell like a sewer."

"You get stuck in a Kaiju bunker and nearly soil yourself with fear and see how you smell, sugarplum."

Weiss, of course, chose that moment to arrive and rolled his eyes as he set her up with an IV. "I'm worried about the vomiting. You might have some sort of bleed, but I'm reluctant to send you for imaging because of your... condition."

"I haven't exactly been living gently," Hermione admitted.

In the end, Weiss ordered a CT for both of them. Outside of the ocular hemorrhages, the pair of them were in remarkably good health. "Go back to your quarters, shower, and you'll sleep it off here in the infirmary. I'll want to run a few tests on you--" Meaning Hermione-- "when you two wake up more refreshed. Rangers Beckett and Mori are coming in soon, and I'll be making sure they're alright."

They took forever with the shower, just scrubbing each other, touching, kissing, even if half-way through Hermione had to sit on her bench in the shower, they still stayed there, even as they were sagging and wrinkly and pruney they stayed there.

"My god," Newt said, kissing her waterlogged head.

"We won."

"I knew we'd get here."

He hadn't. He'd never been confident, always been worried, but Hermione tilted her head up and kissed his stomach anyway - the closest skin at hand. "Of course you did, dear."

They finally ended up back in the infirmary, curled up together on a slightly wide hospital bed, Newt on his side so that Hermione could lay out flat, his hand over her belly, his face mashed against her shoulder.

"I didn't think we'd get here," she whispered, soft enough as to not disturb Mori and Beckett - a few beds over.

"I know."

"I hope it's alright," she said, threading her fingers through Newt's across her belly.

"Everything you did, _every_ step of the way, was necessary, 'Mione," Newt assured her. "I couldn't have taken that neural load. I-- every step of the way, I needed you."

"And I you, Newton." She knew that, but even now the sinking realization that she had perhaps been... reckless, and dangerous, and placed her foetus in harm's way, was sinking in. Now was when all of the data collapsed into a logical conclusion. "But if it is not alright..."

"We can have other children," Newt promised her. "And they will have a world worth being born into for the first time since we met."

"Yes, of course." She closed her eyes, fingers still entwined with Newt's. "I owe you a marriage."

"Later," Newt answered, pulling himself closer.

"No. Now. Today. No more Later and After. I've waited, and made you wait, a decade, and I won't any longer." That was a promise that she wanted to make to Newton, and wanted to make for herself.

"Wedding night spent in the infirmary with stickies stuck to our heads and tubes in our veins, our family's bitching at us for the rest of our lives because after a decade we decide to elope?" Newt chuckled into her shoulder. "For you, anything."

They had to wait for some time, mostly because the matter of getting married would require either a Marshal - so bequeathed with the power to do all a great deal of legally binding things within a Shatterdome - or a Chaplain, and unfortunately it seemed in very poor taste to ask Marshal Hansen to officiate a wedding not three hours after his son had died.

Unfortunately, neither of them were particularly religious, but the two of them had seen Father Joe on more than one occasion throughout their time with the PPDC. He visited them after what must have been rounds with Hansen and then Mori, before he finally came into their room.

"Brett says you're doing well," Joe said, sitting down next to the pair. "You need anything?"

"Morphine," Newt answered, without even thinking about it.

Hermione snorted. "Ah... actually, yes. We could use something."

Joe arched an eyebrow, largely because whenever he visited Hermione - usually when she was being treated for MS and very out of sorts - she had, on occasion, told Joe to get stuffed. "Well, whatever I can do."

Newt glanced down at her, and Hermione gave him a nod, and although they rarely were out of synch, they clearly were on the same page in that moment. "We'd like you to marry us. Today."

It probably shouldn't have been funny, but Joe gave a little chuckle anyway. "How long has it been?"

"Eight years, three months, and 28 days," Hermione answered, not even pausing to think about it. "Since we were engaged... add two years for when we met."

"Of course you counted," Newt said, pulling her close. "It just seems like the right day for it. The start of the future."

" _Normally_ , I'd want to talk to the couple, together and separate... but I think everyone in the entire PPDC knows the two of you and your relationship, and the lengths you will go to be at each other's side."

"We Drifted," Hermione said, a moment later. "I think we are... compatible enough."

"I'm not even going to make you stand up," Joe said. "And neither of you would particularly appreciate an invocation. Ah, Newton, if you'd like to say something?"

"Ahh--" After that ramble he had left her, Newt was surprisingly speechless. But he eventually nodded, and took a deep breath. "Hermione, I loved you from the first moment I saw you at that... ridiculously overpriced bar in Seoul. I did everything I could to keep you by my side, even when we had continents and oceans between us. You are the spark that keeps me going, you make me a better scientist, and a better man. You drive me... to distraction and to the future."

Hermione took a pair of deep breaths, blinking back her tears and feeling... she'd felt that in the Drift, pieces of it, and Newt had said it more often than not, but to hear it, and feel it in the back of her mind, all mashed together, meant so much.

"Hermione?" Joe prompted, a few moments later.

"Newton, I never thought I would find someone like you, someone who saw a woman and a scientist in equal measure, someone who loved me in spite of my... tendency to get lost in my own numbers and to forget everything around me." Hermione took a moment to pause, to reflect, to think about everything Newt meant to her. "You have been my constant for a decade, and I would be a fool if I did not continue to keep you constant. I-- I know I'm not always the easiest to get along with, but somehow we manage, and... even if the road is difficult in the future, I will be your constant as well."

"Well, then... I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss, not that you haven't been doing that without the blessing of marriage for years."

"Lot more than kissing," Newt said, under his breath, as he leaned in for his kiss, and Hermione pulled him in, even though Newt definitely didn't deserve it after that comment, but she kissed him anyway.

They kissed after Joe left as well, and Hermione didn't even feel a little guilty about it.

"Wife..." Newt leaned in and kissed her collarbone. "Do you feel different? I don't feel different. I feel like I should feel different."

"I'm fairly certain on the list of things that has happened today, perhaps being married is only the third or fourth most important thing you have done," Hermione answered, feeling fairly magnanimous.

"Drift with a Kaiju, seal the Breach, Drift with my wife... no, no, getting married was definitely the most important part of my day." He leaned in and kissed her throat. "We should sleep. Tomorrow everyone will expect us to explain how we're not dead. I'm going to make fun of my father in law."

"I knew there was a reason I married you."

Of course, the next morning came far too soon, and Hansen did want them to explain why they weren't dead, and all the science behind that, and the two of them woke up long enough to shower quickly and change. As always, Newt gave her a kiss before they headed out for the day.

They all but sleep walked through their way through it, Newt explaining the biology and Hermione explaining the math. She knew that the biology was the far more exciting part, and she didn't begrudge that at all, it was simply the way it was concerning math.

Newt couldn't quite resist the urge to dig at Lars, to mention both that Otachi could fly and that Slattern had survived a thermonuclear explosion, and the two of them may have retreated from the press conference and smiled at each other, just a bit.

Their smiles faded when they returned to the infirmary and had to face the truth music, the thing that had been nagging at the back of Hermione's mind for the last twenty-four hours: how much had she risked her foetus for the sake of the world?

Newt joined her, hand on hers, as Weiss began his examination that ultimately culminated in an ultrasound. She could admit she'd been avoiding this since finding out she was pregnant. There was something about actually looking at the child, and seeing it that she couldn't have taken even two days ago... but now there was the reality that she had not been kind to herself.

The two of them were silent as Weiss conducted the ultrasound. "I suppose the question is... Hermione has been _avoiding_ me."

"I have not!" Hermione protested. She had simply been busy, the fate of the world had hung in the balance.

"And, as such, we have not talked much about your pregnancy, development and progress. Has the moratorium on discussing it changed?"

She glanced over at Newt, and her husband -- _husband_ \-- had a look of undisguised enthusiasm on his face, but he schooled it only a few moments later.

"I suppose we intend to keep it," Hermione answered. "Barring reasons why that would be untenable. Yes. Tell us what we need to know."

"Well, firstly, you should know that _they_ appear to be well formed," Weiss said, allowing the word to sink in.

" _They_?!" Newt said. "You said 'they'. Two?"

Weiss nodded, and slowly turned the sonogram monitor towards them, showing the pair of children, more just two heads that were fairly easy to pick out even for a mathematician. She was an expert at counting.

Newt didn't stop himself from climbing up on the bed to see the picture more closely, and the two of them looked, quiet, hands together, breath caught in their collective throats. They were... theirs.

The pleased magic of the moment soon devolved into the realization that they would both be coming from her insides to her outsides. Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. "As if this whole thing wasn't trying enough," Hermione said, with absolutely no fire. "They're... well formed?"

"No obvious physical defects," Weiss answered, reassuring her, but it was really no reassurance, not really. "You're at eighteen weeks, and now would be when I would recommend an amnio if you were going to get one."

"You would recommend one, though," Newt said, not missing Weiss's tone.

"I would." He looked over at Hermione, and his face was just as compassionate as when they had discussed the pregnancy in the first place. "I'm sorry, there are just so many factors. You two don't deserve to go through this, but Hermione is thirty-five, has a chronic autoimmune disorder, is carrying multiples, and they do appear to be underweight. Even if I weren't worried about some of the obvious potential fetal deformities, there is the fact that PacCoast Syndrome is real, and the risk of defects in children of parents who have lived along the coast is elevated."

Hermione closed her eyes, and blinked back the tears that were threatening to form there. "So... we should do that."

"I can't," Weiss answered. "You will need to see a specialist. I... called a friend at Hopkins yesterday, and he can see you next week for the amnio. I'm just an over-glorified GP, in the end."

"You're great, Doc." Newt squeezed her hand, head bowed over it for a moment.

"There are risks, miscarriage, infection... I've printed up some information for you to look over. I know you're... risk-averse, Hermione, so at least I can let you know the risks." Weiss smiled, and looked at them both, holding out his own hand and Hermione took it. "You two both deserve the best, but I both know you don't believe in luck."

"Just the numbers," Hermione answered. "Thank you, Doctor. We will organize transport to go to Maryland and have the amnio. Do we know their sexes?"

"A boy and a girl."

"We should name them Leto and Ghanima," Newt whispered. "Kaiju Blue, Drifting..."

"You are never allowed to name a child, Newton." Still, she understood the urge. For all he had joked about naming one of their children Isaac, there was the fact that he might have wanted to save that name for a child that was likely to live and perhaps be healthy.

*

Baltimore was cold as hell, windy, and miserable.

Newt sat by Hermione's side, holding her hand through the amnio, and as much as it seemed like a poor excuse for a honeymoon, they spent some time together in New York, walking, looking around, holding hands, and simply appreciating the moment that they could live in the future.

"Where on Earth will we go?" Hermione asked, the two of them curled up on a huge bed, enjoying the cushy luxury of their hotel instead of the spartan nature of their quarters in the Shatterdome.

"Pretty sure we could give lectures until we retired," Newt answered, "but... I've always thought about MIT, a little house in the city. We'll figure it out."

"Somehow we always do."

"A part of me wonders if we know how to stop."

"We don't," Hermione answered. "I think we're going to find a new problem, and we're going to work on that one for the next decade."

"Parenthood?" Newt suggested.

"Two decades for that, at least."

Even a week of the best food New York City had to offer didn't actually get 'Mione to put on much weight - doc had recommended she put on at least five or ten, since 'Mione was chronically underweight. Newt, of course, managed to put on seven pounds.

Newt dozed, face down in their mattress as Hermione stared up at the ceiling. They would be back in Hong Kong in another day, funding had been found for the rest of the year, pending further decisions for 2026. Newt considered it a wedding present from his father in law.

"If one of these tests comes back positive..." Hermione said, voice soft... "I did that."

"'Mione." Newt sighed into the mattress before he reached an arm around her, settling across her waist, the swell there _finally_ becoming pronounced enough for Newt to believe there were kids in there, not just a heavy dinner. "Of course not. Even if you'd lived in some pampered little home in Germany from the day we conceived there would still be a chance of defect or deformity. Alison worked the munitions line in the same bay as a pair of nuclear powered Jaegers until she was fourteen weeks along, and Gabe's fine."

It would be hard, no matter what the results, Newt knew they would always have a little bit of doubt and concern, until the children were born, until they grew up. Maybe that was just what parenthood was.

" _I_ won't blame you. I'm a biologist, mutation happens, it doesn't have to be because of an environmental factor."

"We've just... you've wanted children for years."

"You have too." Sometimes Newt wondered, Hermione could be so distant about the idea of children, but he knew - he knew with certainty - that that was just her way, not some way of pushing away the prospect. "We can try again, if we have to, if we want to."

Hermione threaded her hand over his, fingers rubbing against his. "I want this for us, children... bratty, genius little children. I'm not sure it's sunk in yet. I'm blown up like a balloon and it's not sunk in yet."

"Do you remember what Alison looked like at twenty weeks?" Newt asked, wriggling so he could lean in and kiss her belly. "And she and Tendo were just having Gabe."

"Allow me the indignity of a sulk, Newton."

"Oh, yes. _Terribly sorry_." Newt made a stuffy little 'hem hem hem' before he couldn't help but laugh, drawing her into a chuckle as well, and she went back to his hair, fingers stroking through it as they found an almost comfortable position. "Can you feel them?"

"Sometimes," she answered. "It will be a few more weeks before their acrobatics can draw your attentions. I already find my balance... precarious."

"Is it bad?" Newt had always known it would be difficult for Hermione, whenever they decided to have children, her MS and her muscle weakness would always be a part of her life, her occasional problems with her vision were also a constant reminder.

"I should probably give up the boards for the time being, but all of our doctors have stressed the importance of exercise, so... we'll see what the balance is."

Newt hoped that it wouldn't impact her too badly, four months of being functionally invalided wouldn't leave Hermione in particularly good spirits. "How's your back?"

"Terrible." For a moment, Newt believed her, but she continued. "Awful, intolerable, back rubs are immediately required." She then rolled onto her side, back facing Newt.

Newt answered by kissing her spine. "You're lucky I'm so in love with you," he said, sliding out of bed to find some lotion.

He nearly missed her answering 'I know', but he didn't give her long to dwell on that, just rubbed down her neck and her back.

"I live in a universe where I can just..." He bowed his head, trying to put it into words. "The most important thing in my world right now is giving my wife a back rub."

"Then all is right in the universe."

They didn't talk about the genetic testing results - they had another week or two for that - they didn't talk about names or futures or what they would do if there were serious genetic abnormalities, they didn't talk about anything but loving each other and all that ridiculously gooey shit that they rarely got around to when the world was falling apart.

Tendo greeted them at the entry elevator. Hermione was bundled up in one of her ridiculous sweaters - still just sufficient to hide her belly - while Newt kept a firm arm out for her left side to match the cane.

"Did you two really get married without telling _anyone_?"

"We told Joe," Hermione answered, ignoring the main question. "And Brett."

"Which means _someone_ broke their confidentiality," Newt said.

"Joe put in for a marriage license with Hansen, his response was, politely 'what the fuck is this', and he made me check with Joe, and he _married you_ and you two didn't even say?" Tendo grabbed Newt around his free arm, and the two of them rode down to the level of their quarters.

"It seemed in poor taste to make the day about us," Hermione explained. "It was simply time to make things official, and I had promised Newton we would get married as soon as the Breach was closed."

"Makes it way easier to remember our anniversary, too, Dude."

Hermione, as expected, rolled her eyes.

"Well, we're down to really crappy wine and vodka at this point, but I'll have you know a lot of people had a lot of money riding on the outcome of your engagement and want to toast you. There's a bottle of really nice scotch in the pool as well, won by my lovely wife Alison," Tendo said, continuing to wrap his arm around Newt's shoulder.

The two of them shared a quick glance, the sort of thing that married people - or people who'd been dating for a decade - could do with just their eyes, and Newt deferred to Hermione's wisdom on the matter.

"I'm afraid I will have to abstain," Hermione answered.

"Not even one to celebrate saving the world?" Tendo plied.

"No, I--" Hermione glanced towards Newt. "What would be an appropriate euphemism?"

"Hermione finds herself... in a family way," Newt said, and he watched Hermione's face light up, her lips curling up ever so slightly as she looked down. "So, no, no drinks."

"Really?" Tendo looked between the two of them. "You and 'Mione? Married and kids. Ali and I just found out we're expecting our second, and..." Tendo paused, frowned, and then glanced between the pair of them. "I thought you two were waiting."

"Yes," Hermione answered. "And yet, as a mathematician I am intimately aware of the failure rates on various contraceptive methods, so... there is that. We will be expecting in approximately twenty weeks."

"Twenty? Where the hell are you keeping it?" Tendo asked, glancing down at Hermione. "In a tank in your lab?"

"We should have done that," Newt stage whispered, only to earn a gentle stomp from 'Mione's cane on his foot.

"Well, if Ali and yourself would like to come over and complain about not drinking and the variety of aches and pains I was not in any way prepared to handle, do feel free to come over after dinner, but right now I find myself jet-lagged beyond measure."

They ended up kissing, more, and then showering while they planned for a larger room if they kept their jobs beyond the end of the year.

Newt ended up cajoling Hermione out of her baggy sweater and into a button down, which Hermione ended up staring at herself in for several minutes. "They'll ask about them," Hermione said, hand on her belly.

"Like Tendo isn't the worst gossip in the whole Shatterdome," Newt answered, but he knew the feeling. He had had months to become accustom to the idea, but he knew Hermione had been resisting the final acceptance of her pregnancy for some time. "Are you alright?"

He came up behind her, brushing the swell there and holding her close.

"Yes... just..." She leaned back into him, and he pulled her even tighter. "What if they're sick?"

"Then no one will blame you. It's just a quirk, one way or the other. Babies are born sick every day." Newt kissed her shoulder, and then nuzzled there. "And healthy."

The pair of them ended up in the commissary, and Newt loaded down one tray with a disgusting quantity of food. No one really gave him a second look, as it was taken as a given that Newt would be taking even more food for Hermione, and soon enough there would be even more gossip on the topic of Hermione and his eating habits.

Tendo and Ali joined the pair of them just a bit later, and Newt noted that Ali already was starting to show, although her clothing was more obviously designed to show off what bump there was.

" _Twenty_ weeks?" Ali said, just as she sat down, handily proving that there were no secrets between the pair, and that Tendo was a ridiculous gossip. Hermione's little nod made her gape. "I thought twelve, for sure, you don't look it."

Newt knew it bothered Hermione, just a little bit, drawing attention to the fact that her children might be undersized or anything else of the sort, but they would get through this, and... come what may, they would face the future together.

.epilogue.

They did easily two dozen interviews before Hermione finally agreed that they should speak to their parents. Newt had wanted to call his mother and father the day of, but it had been agreed that inter-marital harmony would be disrupted if they didn't call both sets of parents at the same time.

In the meantime, Newt had packed and cleared away all of his kaiju specimens and placed them into something resembling storage. He'd practiced some dubiously legal eminent domain on most of Chau's specimens and sent the bill to Hermione’s father. They looked over their numbers, they considered papers, and they went on various talk shows and academic interviews over Skype, dutifully ignoring the occasional calls from their parents.

The truth was, they were waiting for their results.

Newt scanned down the genetic reports of the twins. "No spina bifida, no Down's..." His face crinkled as he continued to scan over the results that Dr. Weiss had gotten for them. "I mean... nothing obvious, no obvious chromosomal damage on either child."

He didn't seem relieved. Of the two of them, it had always been Hermione who dwelled on the potential negatives, so it was disconcerting to see her usually upbeat husband so nervous. "All good news," she clarified.

That seemed to snap him out of it. "Yes. All good news."

They waited until the evening to call Newt's parents - Skype, really - curled up together on what passed for a couch in their quarters.

Her mother-in-law - Monica Schwartz - answered on the third ring. "Look who is mighty enough to call us now!" As much as the tone held sarcasm, her face was warm. "I have caught every one of your talks! My darling Doctors."

Monica always called them Doctors, which was an interesting change from Newt, who rarely called anyone by their proper title. 

"Good morning, Monica," Hermione said, smiling at her. "We apologize for the delay... something about saving the world, I think?"

"Yes, yes, yes, you're forgiven. A month is an _almost_ reasonable silence." Her look said that she didn't think it was reasonable at all, but allowed it anyway. "I will return to the topic of pestering you about the wedding."

"We got married last month," Newt answered.

"And you didn't invite your father and I?!"

"It was... a spur of the moment thing..." Newt looked incredibly flustered, as only his mother could manage. "It was the day the Breach was closed; we had to get married that day."

"Only you, Newton Geiszler, would be engaged for eight years and then elope."

Hermione cleared her throat, drawing Monica's attention back towards her. "That does make two of us."

"Yes, very true, but you're the one who decided to tie my boy down, so you I expect to put up with it." Monica gave her a wink, though. "Alright, then... grandbabies! I've been waiting ten years."

"I'm sorry, Monica," Hermione answered, before Newt could. "I'm afraid you'll have to wait, these things take time."

Newt snorted.

"Stop that," she hissed.

Which, of course, only made Newt chuckle harder.

Hermione slapped a hand over Newt's mouth and leaned into the camera. " _But_ ," she continued. "Since it is such a time consuming process, labor intensive." Newt snorted again. "Newton and I have decided to have twins."

Monica opened her mouth, and then shut it again. "You can't actually decide that."

"None the less."

And that was the point that Monica covered her mouth and made an undignified squeak. 

"Are there pictures?" She asked, words muffled around her hand.

Newt helpfully pulled up the imaging from their sonogram on his tablet, pointing it towards the screen. "Here's the boy, and our baby girl." He tilted them so that Monica could see, and she still had her mouth covered and even with the grainy image from Germany, Hermione could see that Monica was starting to cry.

"They're so big..."

"Eighteen weeks, here," Newt said. "'Mione's at twenty-two weeks now."

"Twenty-two weeks? You two had talked about..." Monica seemed to realize what she was saying, and shook her head. "Are you feeling alright, Hermione? My son treating you right?"

"Of course, Monica." Hermione scooted forward a little bit. "The legs are an adventure some days, but Newt has a handle on it. Sleeping is a bit hit or miss. I'm happy to be through with the nausea though. Help me up?"

Newt held out a hand and helped her to stand in front of the camera, which still didn't show much - just some thickening around the middle - but she was actually a little more impressive from the side, so she turned, hands falling - instinctively - to her belly.

"Tada!" Newt said, hands spread.

"Don't act so smug," Hermione answered, but she gave him a tug and he placed his ear to her belly, which just meant she had her hands full of hair now, and she felt her heart melt at the image he made there, proud and loving and all three of them hers.

"Are they kicking?" Monica asked, still talking around the fist clutched to her mouth.

"Oh yeah," Newt answered. "Not right this second."

"Says you," Hermione answered. She could feel both of them, not as rough as usual, but impressively active none the less.

"Your father and I are going to come visit. You two don't even have to entertain us."

Hermione's own anxiety spiked a moment later, only for her to remember that this was Monica and Johannes they were talking about, not her family, and it would be filled with nothing but a disgusting amount of support and cooing at her belly, and _food_.

"Mom, you really don't have to--" 

"Nonsense. You two will thank me once the babies get here. _Babies!_." Her eyes went wild in a brief moment. "I'm going to have to learn how to knit!"

"Please, Monica, stick to singing." Hermione knew Newt's own forays into handcrafts and they always left disaster in their wake. Hermione also had been with Newt for ten years, and he knew that what little calm the man had came from his father, and the raw, manic energy came from Monica.

"Don't bring knitting needles onto the plane!" Newt said. "Although... fresh fruit... if you call me I can get you through customs."

"Oh my goodness, of course, of course."

Hermione suddenly saw disaster, unending, unrelenting, disaster. A hurricane of Schwartz was incoming and nothing would stand in its way. There was nothing for it but for Hermione to display her 'bump', and one of the kids actually managed to make a noticeable bulge in her belly while Monica watched, and then Johannes finally woke up and came into frame only for him to smile, take the entire thing as exactly what should happen after the world was saved.

"We'll be there in two or three weeks," Monica promised at the end of the call.

On Hermione's side, they started with Karla, who made a high-pitched squealing noise and then made her show off the bump. Dietrich thought the matter commonplace after his own three children, and Bastien didn't answer the phone. That left only mother and father... 

"Ugh." Hermione set her forehead on the desk in front of the computer.

"Hem hem hem!" Newt cleared his throat, and slid his glasses down to the end of his nose, looking down at her through them. "Hermione, really, marrying that riffraff! And that Berliner accent!"

Hermione giggled at their - very bad - joke about both Newt's accent and his grand love of donuts, and the horrible imitation of her father. "Stop that, stop that. I have to talk to him and I have to sleep with you."

Of course, when her father answered the call with his _classic_ throat clear, Hermione just started laughing and didn't stop until Newt grabbed her around the waist, his own giggled feeding hers, and the two of them were all but gasping for air in the end, when they finally glanced up at the pinched face of her father.

She cleared her own throat, and when Newt threatened to giggle again she elbowed him in the side. "Sir."

"Lars," Newt added, because he knew it bothered her father immensely and if Newt was going to take advantage of his doctorates, it was going to be to needle his father-in-law with the fact that they were peers when he was being annoying. It was one of the many reasons that Hermione loved him.

"Saved the world, did you?" He asked, causing Hermione to suddenly feel very, very small. But then he sighed, pulled his glasses down from their perch and looked at them both. "Thank you."

Hermione looked down at her hands, choked up tears threatening to fall at a stupid, simple pair of words that shouldn't have meant anything but instead meant everything.

"Thank you, sir," Newt answered for her. "We've... been a bit busy."

"I've seen a few of your talks," her father answered. He was quiet, and Hermione saw it as the look of her father when he had been reflecting and considering. "Now are you going to let him make you an honest woman, Hermione?"

"I already did, last month."

"So your spiky haired, hipster donut is now my son-in-law?"

Newt just shrugged. "She said yes."

Father took another moment, silent, his face pinched but not exactly in pain. "I would say welcome to the family, but you've already had more than a few years of that, haven't you? So what is next for the world savers?"

"Children," Hermione answered, without hesitation. "We are pregnant, and will be having twins this summer."

"She's not kidding," Newt answered. "I think I've put on more weight than her."

"And this is what I have agreed to live with for the rest of my life," Hermione said, kissing Newt.

The exchange had the benefit of drawing her eyes away from her father for the few moments it took him to form a reaction, and have Hermione turn back to see him smiling. "I will be sure to tell your mother. Let us know when they arrive."

And then he disconnected the call.

"Cheers, asshole," Newt grumbled. "Well, that's it. You, me, a half bottle of orange juice that I got Tendo to smuggle in, I'll rub your back."

"My _legs_ ," she answered instead.

So they ended up on the couch in their lab - where they had the most space - with her and Newt drinking orange juice out of a pair of coffee mugs while Newt worked out the twitches and tension in her legs. Hermione pretended not to notice that Newt gave her the lion's share of the orange juice.

"This is it," Newt said rubbing her feet, going so far to have the shoes and socks neatly stripped on the floor. "This is the future. You and me, foot rubs, kids, science, visits from my parents..."

Hermione set her mug of orange juice on her belly, which was worth it just for the warm way that Newt smiled over at her. "We'll find new projects. We've made the world that our children will survive in, now it is time to make a world they would be proud of."

"I wanted to change the world with you from the minute I met you."

"You wanted to sleep with me from the minute you met me," Hermione corrected, she knew that now, not that she had doubted it, but Newt had wanted that. It was almost nice to know that her husband of a month - her lover of a decade - had been that attracted to her from the onset.

"Alright, yes," Newt answered, letting go of her feet and crawling up to hover over her. "The 'change the world' took a conversation or two... It's not my fault I got the hottest, most brilliant scientist in the entire Seoul Conference and somehow convinced her to stay with me for the rest of her life."

"What a coincidence, I thought I got the handsomest and smartest guy there."

The two of them relaxed on the couch, made out there, even, with Hermione just starting to get the feel for her new body and her new _life_.

*

Newt wasn't sure if having his mother and father in Hong Kong was a blessing or a curse. Mom had taken to knitting - in spite of Newt's expressed wishes to the contrary - and was now in the process of knitting multiples of _everything_. They had hats, they had booties, they had sweaters, they had pants, they had all of the above at neatly measured 3 month increments for the first year. Monica had eschewed the worst of gender normative design, and so they had these things in greens and browns and purples - sometimes all those colors at once - and there was one truly impressive sweater - for Newt - that mimicked his tattoos (badly), but he loved his mother and sometimes wore it around the lab.

Newt and Johannes had tried, valiantly, to assemble a crib. They were men, they should have been able to figure this out, but instead they wound up down in one of the machine shops in the Shatterdome bribing one of the carpenters with liquor.

They planned for a cesarean at 38 weeks - between the twins and the MS and everything else, they had been advised to take the easy course - so, of course, Hermione went into labor three days earlier than the c-section was planned and Newt promptly _freaked out_.

"Are you alright?" He said, as he scrambled out of bed and went to find the wheelchair that had been Hermione's intermittent mode of transportation for the last two months. "Do you need anything? Can I help?!"

"Newton!!" Hermione growled at him, loud. "Just bring me the chair and calm down."

It took them two tries, for Newt to get Hermione situated and modest and together, with a blanket thrown over her legs and her shirt neatened up. "I love you."

"Yes, I know, and regardless of what I say for the next few hours, I love you, too." She grabbed him at the collar and pulled him in for a quick brush of lips. "Let's go."

Newt found himself in the frantic mix between 'holy shit my wife is in labor' and trying to remain vaguely calm in a way he sometimes managed even when the world was being eaten by monsters. Their trip down the halls and elevators was strained, but Newt focused on the goal: Hermione to the infirmary. They made it in only a few minutes, and then Hermione was taken care of and Weiss took over and Newt tried to avoid a complete and total meltdown because he wasn't the one about to push a pair of baby-shaped bowling balls out of his dick.

He hadn't needed that image, really.

This was it. Kids. Children... he held onto Hermione's hand throughout the time she was eased into gowns and helped into beds and just held on as the two of them waited through the start of Hermione's contractions and the arrival of their obstetrician.

By hour three they were well into 'I hate you and we're never having sex again'.

Newt did not leave Hermione’s side as she tried to be stoic for a few minutes at a time, only to descend into loud - truly impressive and filthy - curses, some of them his name, some of them quite possibly to _Isaac_ Newton, as she pushed, and all but crushed Newt’s hand in hers.

Their daughter was first, small, and pink, and screaming at the top of her little baby lungs as Dr. Weiss handed her off to one of the techs. Newt glanced, torn, wanting to _see_ the tiny little miracle, but another crushing squeeze from 'Mione pulled his attention back to her and he wiped a hand over her brow. "One down, 'Mione. One more miracle. You’ve earned it."

"How is it?" She asked, gasping between contractions.

The tech gave him a nod, all smiles.

"She. She’s good. I promise."

Hermione's little sob broke something in Newt's chest and he started to cry. _Children_. How had they ever been that lucky?

Their son followed, far less noisy, and he waited, breathless, as Hermione slowly recovered from the labor. Her breathing evened, and he allowed Weiss a few minutes to see to the children.

"Babies." Newt said, leaning in to kiss the sweat-soaked brow before him. "You're a miracle worker."

"You're having the next one."

"Tank grown."

Hermione laughed, but it was a small thing, exhausted, and he couldn't help but lean in and touch, watching her pulse on the monitors. He looked at her and started to cry, again. He could hardly feel it right now, it was too much, too overwhelming, their children, his wife, everything here in one room and he couldn’t hold it all in.

"Shhhh," Hermione said, pulling him down to her chest. "I'm supposed to be the wreck."

"You know it’s never worked that way before."

They held each other, waiting; somehow Newt didn't dare to hope that everything would be fine, everything would be resolved in their favor. Maybe they'd tried their luck too much, maybe they were owed this. Newt didn’t know.

"Want to see the fruits of your labor?" He whispered.

Hermione gently eased his head off of her body. "Yes... yes, I want to see them."

Newt glanced over to where the obstetrician and Weiss were standing over their children in their little hospital bassinets. "How are they?"

"Your son is a little quiet," Weiss answered. "But their lungs are strong, just... not interested in crying much."

They did whimper, and Newt could see their arms flailing about - in that uncoordinated, newborn way - when Weiss picked up one - 'your daughter' - and offered it to Newt, only to have Hermione reach out and pull their daughter to her chest. He followed with their son, set into Newt's arms, and the two of them looked down at their children and--

"Whoa..." His son's eyes were... violently iridescence blue. It was not a natural blue, it was... well Newt recognized it instantly; bright, bio-luminescent, icy blue that made the room darker when his son blinked. A quick glance saw their daughter's eyes were similarly bright. A moment of fear and concern spiked across his mind, and his son whimpered in response, only for Newt to remember that this was his son. "Hey, handsome, welcome to the world."

Hermione bent her arms just enough to kiss her daughter on the forehead. "Took you long enough."

"Not even nine months."

"I meant the nine years, Newton."

"Oh." Newt grinned.

"You two should rest, get to know your children, I'll make you up some bottles since I'd rather Hermione not breastfeed until I've done a few more tests," Weiss said. "I'm come draw a few tubes later for some chemistry checks."

And so the two of them ended up curled together on Hermione's hospital room bed, side to side, both of them holding their children, looking down at them.

"The Drift?" Hermione asked, biting her lip now, concerned. "The Blue exposure?"

Newt honestly had no idea. "I read some case studies," he admitted. "Blue exposure has had some effects."

There were a thousand different things, none of them particularly well documented. The effects varied, and the subsequent children often were pressured to become priests in the various Kaiju cults around the world. 

Newt pulled his son to his chest for a moment, as though the gesture could protect him from the world. 

"We'll take it as it comes," he told her. "They are perfect."

Hermione brought their daughter to her chest and kissed her forehead again. "Yes."

"Remember what I said?" Newt said. "About names when we found out they were twins."

"No."

"I said..."

"No, as in 'no, absolutely not, Newton'. I'm not having our children named as though their parents are a pair of fanboys."

"It's one of the best sci-fi series of all time."

"No."

"'Mioneeeee... It's not like I'm asking for Luke and Leia here."

She sighed, and looked down at their eyes - Newt knew it was their eyes that was drawing her attention. "What sort of name is Ghanima anyway?"

"She could go by Annie, or Jenny?" Newt offered.

After the next exasperated exhalation, Newt knew that he might actually be winning ground. "Ask me again when I'm not on painkillers."

He knew he'd won after that, and the two of them continued to sit, looking down at the start of their family - and it _was_ the start. Newt knew that they would continue on, journey into the future, these ridiculously wonderful children would take off from the shoulders of giants - of rock stars - and they would crash headlong into a bright future.


End file.
